The Romancero has been described, in a phrase attributed to Lope de Vega, as ‘an Iliad without a Homer.’ More prosaically, it is a collection of romances; and, before going further, it may be as well to observe that the meaning of the word romance has become much restricted in course of time. Originally used to designate the varieties of speech derived from Latin, it was applied later only to the body of written literature in the different vernaculars of Romania, and then, by another limitation, it was applied solely to poems written in these languages. Lastly, the meaning of the word was still further narrowed in Spanish, and a romance has now come to mean a special form of verse-composition—an epical-lyric poem arranged primarily in lines of sixteen syllables with one assonance sustained throughout. There are occasional variants from the type. Some few romances have a refrain; in some of the oldest romances there is a change of assonance: but the normal form of the genuine popular romances is what I have just described it to be. There should be no mistake on this point, and yet a mistake may easily be made. Though the metrical structure of these popular Spanish ballads had been demonstrated as far back as 1815 by Grimm in his Silva de romances viejos, so good a scholar as AgustÍn DurÁn—to whom we owe the largest existing collection of romances—has printed them in such a shape as to give the impression 78 that they were written in octosyllabics of which only the even lines (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) are assonanced. Moreover, he expounds this theory in his Discurso preliminar, and his view is supported by the high authority of Wolf.6 Still, it cannot be maintained. It is undoubtedly true that the later artistic ballads of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, written by professional poets like Lope de Vega and GÓngora, were composed in the form which DurÁn describes. We are not concerned this afternoon, however, with these brilliant artificial imitations, but with the authentic, primitive ballads of the people. These old Spanish romances, I repeat, are written normally in lines of sixteen syllables, every line ending in a uniform assonance. They should be printed so as to make this clear, and indeed they are so printed by the celebrated scholar Antonio de Nebrija who, in his GramÁtica sobre la lengua castellana (1492), quotes three lines from one of the Lancelot ballads:—

There are other erroneous theories respecting the romances against which you should be warned at the outset. Sancho Panza, in his pleasant way, informed the Duchess that these ballads were ‘too old to lie’; but he gives no particulars as to their age, and thereby shows his wisdom. Most English readers who are not specialists take their information on the subject from Lockhart’s Introduction to his Ancient Spanish Ballads, a volume containing free translations of fifty-three romances, published in 1823. Lockhart, who drew most of his material from Depping,7 probably knew as much about the matter as any one of his time in England; but, though we move slowly in our Spanish studies, we make some progress, and Lockhart’s opinions on certain points relating to the romances are no longer tenable. He notes, for example, that the Cancionero general contains ‘several pieces which bear the name of Don Juan Manuel,’ identifies this writer with the author of the Conde Lucanor, states that these pieces ‘are among the most modern in the collection,’ and naturally concludes that most of the remaining pieces must have been written long before 1348, the year of Don Juan Manuel’s death. Lockhart goes on to observe that the Moors undoubtedly exerted ‘great and remarkable influence over Spanish thought and feeling—and therefore over Spanish language and poetry’; and, though he does not say so in precise terms, he leaves the impression that this reputed Arabic influence is visible in the Spanish romances. These views, widely held in Lockhart’s day, are now abandoned by all competent scholars; but unfortunately they still prevail among the general public.

MilÁ y Fontanals, who incidentally informs us that Corneille was the first foreigner to quote a Spanish romance,8 states that these theories as to the antiquity and Arabic origin of the romances were first advanced by another foreigner—Pierre-Daniel Huet, Bishop of Avranches—towards the end of the seventeenth century.9 But they made little way till 1820, when the theory of Arabic origin was confidently reiterated by Conde in his Historia de la dominaciÓn de los Árabes en EspaÑa. Conde’s scholarship has been declared inadequate by later Orientalists, and the rest of us must be content to accept the verdict of these experts who alone have any right to an opinion on the matter. But it cannot be disputed that Conde had the knack of presenting a case plausibly, and of passing off a conjecture for a fact. Hence he made many converts who perhaps exaggerated his views. It is just possible—though unlikely—that there may be some slight relation between an Arabic zajal and such a Spanish composition as the serranilla quoted in the last lecture:—

But, in the first place, a serranilla is not a romance; and, in the second place, a more probable counter-theory derives the serranilla form from the Portuguese-Galician lyrics which are themselves of French origin. Beyond this very disputable relation, there is no basis for Conde’s theory. Dozy has shown conclusively that nothing could be more unlike than the elaborately learned conventions of Arabic verse and 81 the untutored methods of the Spanish romances, the artless expression of spontaneous popular poetry. It may be taken as established that there is no trace of Arabic influence in the romances, and there is no sound reason for thinking that any existing romance is of remote antiquity. So far from there being many extant specimens dating from before the time of Don Juan Manuel, there are none. What some have believed to be the oldest known romance—

refers to an incident which occurred in 1430, almost a century after Don Juan Manuel’s death; and even if we take for granted that one of the romances fronterizos or border-ballads—

was first written as early as 1368, we are still twenty years after Don Juan Manuel’s time. There may be romances which in their original form were written before these two; but, if so, they are unrecognisable. The authentic romances lived only in oral tradition; they were not thought worth writing down, and they were not printed till late in the day. The older a romance is, the more unlikely it is to reach us unchanged. No existing romance, in its present form, can be referred to any period earlier than the fifteenth century, and romances of this date are comparatively rare.

The first to mention this class of composition is Santillana in his well-known letter to the Constable of Portugal written shortly before 1450, and he dismisses the popular balladists with all the disdain of a gentleman who writes at his ease. ‘Contemptible poets are those who without any order, rule or rhythm make those songs and romances in which low folk, and of menial station, take delight.’ A cause must be prospering before it is denounced in this fashion, and it may therefore be assumed that many romances were current when Santillana delivered judgment. Writing in 1492 and quoting from the Lancelot ballad already mentioned, Nebrija speaks of it as ‘aquel romance antiguo’; but ‘old’ has a very relative meaning, and Nebrija may have thought that a ballad composed fifty years earlier deserved to be called ‘old.’ At any rate, the oldest romances no doubt took their final form between the time of Santillana’s youth and Nebrija’s, and the introduction of printing into Spain has saved some of these for us. But—it must be said again and again—they are comparatively few in number, and no Spanish ballad is anything like as ancient as our own Judas ballad which exists in a thirteenth-century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Santillana slightly overstates his case when he speaks of those who composed romances as ‘contemptible poets’ catering for the rabble. We have seen that RodrÍgue de la CÁmara and Carvajal both wrote romances in the fourth or fifth decade of the fifteenth century. Santillana cannot have meant to speak contemptuously of his two contemporaries, one a poet at the Castilian court of Juan II., and the other a poet at the Neapolitan court of Alfonso V. of AragÓn; he evidently knew nothing of these artistic romances, and would have been pained to hear that educated men countenanced such stuff. No doubt other educated men besides RodrÍguez de la CÁmara and Carvajal wrote in the popular manner; possibly the Lancelot ballad quoted by Nebrija is the work of some court-poet: the conditions were changing, and—though Santillana was perhaps unaware of it—the romances were rising in esteem. But Santillana is right as regards the earlier period. The primitive writers of popular romances were men of humble station, the impoverished representatives of those who had sung the cantares de gesta. These cantares de gesta were worked into the substance of histories and chronicles, and then went out of fashion. The juglares or singers came down in the world; in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they had been welcome at courts and castles where they chanted long epics; by the fourteenth century they sang corrupt abridgments of these epics to less distinguished audiences; by the fifteenth century the epical songs were broken up. The themes were kept alive by oral tradition in the shape of shorter lyrical narratives, and these transformed fragments of the old epics were the primitive romances condemned by Santillana.

The subjects of these popular ballads were historical or legendary characters like Roderick, Bernardo del Carpio, the Counts of Castile, FernÁn GonzÁlez, the Infantes of Lara, the Cid and his lieutenant, and other local heroes. Later on, the nameless poets of the people were tempted to deal with the sinister stories which crystallised round the name of Peter the Cruel, the long struggle against the Moors, episodes famous in the Arthurian legends and the books of chivalry, exploits recorded in the chronicles of foreign countries, miscellaneous incidents borrowed from diverse sources. It was gradually recognised that the popular instinct had discovered a most effective vehicle of poetic expression; more educated versifiers followed the lead of RodrÍguez de la CÁmara and Carvajal, but with a certain shamefaced air. The collections of romances published by Alonso de Fuentes and Lorenzo de SepÚlveda (in 1550 and 1551 respectively) are mainly the work of lettered courtiers who, like the ‘CÆsarean Knight’—the Caballero CesÁreo who contributed to the second edition of SepÚlveda’s book—are conscious of their condescension, and withhold their names, under the quaint delusion that they are ‘reserved for greater things.’

But this bashfulness soon wore off. Before the end of the sixteenth century famous writers like Lope de Vega and GÓngora proved themselves to be masters of the ballad-form, and within a comparatively short while there came into existence the mass of romances which fill the two volumes of the Romancero general published in 16OO and 1605. The best of these are brilliant performances; but they are late, artistic imitations. For genuine old popular romances we must look in broadsides, or in the collections issued at Antwerp and Saragossa in the middle of the sixteenth century by MartÍn Nucio and Esteban de NÁjera respectively. We may also read them (with a good deal more) in the Primavera y Flor de romances edited by Wolf and Hofmann; and, most conveniently of all, in the amplified reprint of the Primavera for which we are indebted to Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo, the most eminent of living Spanish scholars. But the romances—not all of them very ancient—in the amplified Primavera fill three volumes; and, as it would be impossible to examine them one by one, it has occurred to me that the only practical plan is to take Lockhart as a basis, and to comment briefly on the ballads represented in his volume of translations—which I see some of you consulting. There may be occasion, also, to point out some omissions.

Lockhart begins with a translation of a romance quoted in Don Quixote by GinÉs de Pasamonte, after the destruction of his puppet-show by the scandalised knight:—

85 The English rendering, though not very exact throughout, is adequate and spirited enough:—

In a prefatory note to his version, Lockhart says that this ballad ‘appears to be one of the oldest among the great number relating to the Moorish conquest of Spain.’ This is somewhat vague, but the remark might easily lead an ingenuous reader to think that the ballad was very ancient. This is not so. There is a thirteenth-century French epic, entitled AnsÉis de Carthage,13 which represents Charlemagne as establishing in Spain a vassal king named AnsÉis. AnsÉis dishonours Letise, daughter of YsorÉs de Conimbre, and YsorÉs takes vengeance by introducing the Arabs into Spain. Clearly this is another version of the legend concerning the dishonour of ‘La Cava,’ daughter of Count Julian (otherwise IllÁn or UrbÁn) by Roderick. AnsÉis is manifestly Roderick, Letise is ‘La Cava,’ YsorÉs is Julian, and Carthage may be meant for Cartagena. The transmission of this story to France, and a passage in the chronicle of the Moor Rasis—which survives only in a Spanish translation made from a Portuguese version during the fourteenth century by a certain Maestro Muhammad (who dictated apparently to a churchman called Gil PÉrez)—would point to the existence of ancient Spanish epics on Roderick’s overthrow. But no vestige of these epics survives.

The oldest extant romances relating to Roderick are derived from the CrÓnica Sarrazyna of Pedro del Corral, ‘a lewd and presumptuous fellow,’ who trumped up a parcel of lies, according to PÉrez de GuzmÁn. Corral’s book is not all lies: he compiled it from the CrÓnica general, the chronicle of the Moor Rasis, and the CrÓnica Troyana, and padded it out with inventions of his own. But the point that interests us is that Corral made his compilation about the year 1443, and it follows that the romances derived from it must be of later date. They are much later: the oldest were not written till the sixteenth century, and therefore they are not really ancient nor popular. But some of them have a few memorable lines. For instance, in the first ballad translated by Lockhart:—

There is charm, also, in the romance which begins with the line:—

And as Lockhart omits this, I may quote the opening in Gibson’s excellent version15:—

The romances of this series have perhaps met with rather more success than they deserved on their intrinsic merits. The second ballad translated by Lockhart—

is quoted by DoÑa RodrÍguez in Don Quixote; and the simple chance that these romances were lodged in Cervantes’s memory has made them familiar to everybody. Nor is this the end of their good fortune, for the first ballad translated by Lockhart caught the attention of Victor Hugo, who incorporated a fragment of it in La Bataille perdue.17 Among the twenty-five romances on Roderick in DurÁn’s collection, those by Timoneda, Lorenzo de SepÚlveda, and Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la Vega can, of course, be no older than the middle or the latter half of the sixteenth century. Others, though anonymous, can be shown to belong, at the earliest, to the extreme end of the sixteenth century.

In a note to the eighth poem in his anthology—The Escape of Count Fernan Gonzalez—Lockhart mentions ‘La Cava,’ and remarks that ‘no child in Spain was ever christened by that ominous name after the downfall of the Gothic Kingdom.’ Sweeping statements of this kind are generally dangerous, but in this particular case one might safely go further, and say that no child in Spain, or anywhere else, was ever christened ‘La Cava’ at any time. ‘Cava’ appears to be an abbreviation or variant of the name ‘Alataba,’ and it is first given as the name of Count Julian’s daughter by the Moor Rasis, an Arab historian who lived two centuries after the downfall of the Gothic kingdom, and whose chronicle, as I have already said, survives only in a fourteenth-century Spanish translation made through the Portuguese. We cannot feel sure that the name ‘Cava’ occurred in the original Arabic; and, even if it did, no testimony given two hundred years after an event can be decisive. But why does Lockhart think that ‘Cava’ was an ominous name? Perhaps because he took it to be the Arabic word for a wanton. This is, in fact, the explanation given in the Historia verdadera del rey don Rodrigo y de la pÉrdida de EspaÑa, which purports to be a translation from the Arabic of Abulcacim Tarif Abentarique. It is nothing of the kind. Abentarique is a mythical personage, and his supposititious chronicle was fabricated at Granada by a morisco called Miguel de Luna who, by the way, was the first to assert that ‘La Cava’s’ real name was Florinda. These circumstances enable us to assign a modern date to certain romances which are popularly supposed to be ancient. If a romance speaks of Roderick’s alleged victim as ‘La Cava’ in a derogatory sense, we know at once that it was written after the publication of Luna’s forgery in 1589: and accordingly we must reject as a late invention the notorious ballad beginning—

In Lockhart’s second group of romances the central figure is Bernardo del Carpio who, says the translator, ‘belongs exclusively to Spanish History, or rather perhaps to Spanish Romance.’ The word ‘perhaps’ may be omitted. Bernardo del Carpio was a fabulous paladin invented by the popular poets of Castile, who, either through the Chanson de Roland, or some similar poem, had heard of Charlemagne’s victories in the Peninsula. It is not absolutely certain that Charlemagne ever invaded Spain; still, his expedition is recorded by Arab historians as well as by Castilian chroniclers, and no doubt it was commonly believed to be an historical fact. But, as time went on, the idea that Charlemagne had carried all before him offended the patriotic sentiment of the Castilian folk-poets, and this led them to give the story a very different turn. What happened precisely is not clear, but the explanation suggested by MilÁ y Fontanals and Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo is ingenious and probable. Attracted perhaps by the French name of Bernardo, the juglares seem to have seized upon the far-off figure of a certain Bernardo (son of RamÓn, Count of Ribagorza), who had headed successful raids against the Arabs. They removed the scene of his exploits from AragÓn to Castile, transformed him into the son of the Count de SaldaÑa and Thiber, Charlemagne’s sister—or, alternatively, the son of the Count Don Sancho and Jimena, sister of Alfonso the Chaste—called him Bernardo del Carpio, and hailed him as the champion of Castile. The childless Alfonso is represented as inviting Charlemagne to succeed him when he dies; the mythical Bernardo protests in the name of Alfonso’s subjects, and the offer is withdrawn; thereupon Charlemagne invades Spain, and is defeated at Roncesvalles—not, as in the Chanson de Roland, by the Arabs, but—by Spaniards from the different provinces united under the leadership of Bernardo del Carpio. The CrÓnica general speaks of Bernardo’s slaying with his own hand ‘un alto ome de Francia que avie nombre Buesso,’ and this was developed later into a personal combat between Roland and Bernardo del Carpio who, of course, is the victor. These imaginary exploits were celebrated in cantares de gesta of which fragments are believed to be embedded in the CrÓnica general, and these are represented by three romances. None of the forty-six ballads in the Bernardo del Carpio series can be regarded as ancient with the possible exception of—

quoted in the Second Part of Don Quixote. This romance, as Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo thinks, is derived from a cantar de gesta written after the compilation of the CrÓnica general. Of the Bernardo romances printed in Duran’s collection four are by Lorenzo de SepÚlveda, four by Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la Vega, and three by Lucas RodrÍguez. Lockhart’s four examples are all modern, and his renderings are not specially successful; but in the original the first of the four—

is a capital imitation of a popular ballad. It makes its earliest appearance in the 1604 edition of the Romancero general, and that is enough to prove its modernity.

Another modern ballad, which is also first found in the Romancero general, is translated by Lockhart under the title of The Maiden Tribute. Neither the translation nor the original—

91calls for comment. A similar legend is associated with the name of FernÁn GonzÁlez, the hero of the eighth poem in Lockhart’s book. FernÁn GonzÁlez, Count of Castile, was an historical personage more remarkable as a political strategist than as a leader in the field. However, he makes a gallant figure in the Poema de FernÁn GonzÁlez, a thirteenth-century poem written in the quaderna vÍa, which appears to have been imitated a hundred years later by the French author of Hernaut de Beaulande. But no extant romance on FernÁn GonzÁlez is based on the Poema. The ballad translated by Lockhart—

comes from the Estoria del noble caballero FernÁn GonzÁlez, a popular arrangement of the CrÓnica general as recast in 1344. The romance is a good enough piece of work, but it is more modern than the ballad beginning

and this last romance is less interesting than another ballad of the same period:—

Both of these are thought to represent a lost epic which was worked into the CrÓnica general of 1344.

Lockhart prints translations of two romances relating to the Infantes of Lara, one of them being modern,25 and the other the famous

This was quoted by Sancho Panza, and—as M. FoulchÉ-Delbosc 92 was the first to point out—it has had the distinction of being splendidly adapted by Victor Hugo in the Orientales (xxx.) under the fantastic title of Romance Mauresque:—

In this instance we have to do with a genuine old romance derived—more or less indirectly—from a lost epic on the Infantes of Lara written between 1268 and 1344, or perhaps from a lost recast of this lost epic. And Lockhart might have chosen other ballads of even more energetic inspiration which spring from the same source. Among these are—

in which Rodrigo de Lara vows vengeance for the insult offered to his wife by Gonzalo GonzÁlez, the youngest of the Infantes of Lara; and that genuine masterpiece of barbaric but poignant pathos in which Gonzalo Gustios kisses the severed heads of his seven murdered sons:—

And to these Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo would add a third ballad beginning with the line:—

But, if a foreigner may be allowed an opinion, this falls far short of the others in force and fire.

The next ballad given by Lockhart, entitled The Wedding of the Lady Theresa, is a translation of

first printed by Lorenzo de SepÚlveda, who may perhaps have written it. Whatever doubt there may be as to the authorship, there is none as to the date of this composition: it is no earlier than the sixteenth century. There would seem to be some basis of fact for the story that some Christian princess married some prominent Arab chief; but there is a confusion between Almanzor and the Toledan governor Abdallah on the one hand, and a confusion between Alfonso V. of LeÓn and his father Bermudo II. on the other hand, not to speak of chronological difficulties and the like. But we need not try to unravel the tangle, for there is no authentic old romance on the Infanta Teresa, though a poem on the subject—

has crept into the collection edited by Wolf and Hofmann, This is not unimpressive as a piece of poetic narrative; yet as it is written—not in assonances, but—in perfect rhyme, it is not a romance at all, according to the definition with which we began.

In his choice of romances on the Cid Lockhart has not been altogether happy. He begins well with a translation of the admirable

This is probably no older than the sixteenth century, yet, apart from its poetic beauty, it has a special interest as deriving from a lost Cantar de Rodrigo which differed from the extant CrÓnica rimada. But the remaining poems in Lockhart’s group are mostly poor and recent imitations. Ximena demands vengeance is translated from

But this romance appears for the first time in Escobar’s collection published as late as 1612. Then, again. The Cid and the Five Moorish Kings is translated from

And this is first given by Lorenzo de SepÚlveda who also prints the original of the next ballad, The Cid’s Courtship—

Upon this follows a translation of a ballad which, says Lockhart, ‘contains some curious traits of rough and antique manners,’ and ‘is not included in Escobar’s collection.’ The ballad, which Lockhart entitles The Cid’s Wedding, is translated from

But there is nothing antique about it; it was written in Escobar’s own time, and appeared first in the Romancero general. Nor is there anything antique in the original of The Cid and the Leper—

This is first printed by Lorenzo de SepÚlveda, who is also the first to give

which Lockhart, whose version begins at the eleventh line, calls Bavieca. These are, of course, no older than the sixteenth century, and this is also the date of

entitled The Excommunication of the Cid in the English version. There is a note of disrespect in the original which need cause no surprise, for our Spanish friends, though incorruptibly orthodox, keep their religion and their politics more apart than one might think, and at this very period Charles V. had shown unmistakably that he knew how to put a Pope in his place as regards temporal matters. But it need scarcely be said that the Spanish contains nothing equivalent to Lockhart’s—

a Protestant interpolation so grotesque as to be wholly out of keeping in any Spanish poem.

You will see, then, that most of the Cid ballads translated by Lockhart are unrepresentative. He might have given us a version of

one of three romances41 which are taken from the same source as the first in his group—

But the deficiency has been made good by Gibson who notes as a proof of the ballad’s modernity—it is no older than the sixteenth century—the inclusion of a passage from the Lara legend—

Of the two hundred and five romances on the Cid printed by Madame MichaËlis de Vasconcellos, probably one hundred and eighty at least may be considered modern, and some we know to have been written by Lorenzo de SepÚlveda, Lucas RodrÍguez, and Juan de la Cueva. But the rest are doubtless ancient (as romances go), and it is unfortunate that Lockhart gives no specimen of the ballads on the siege of Zamora. For example, the celebrated ballad that begins

a splendid romance the opening of which may be quoted from Gibson’s rendering:—

Then follow their challenge to any two knights in Sancho’s camp (except the King himself and the Cid), its acceptance by the two Counts, the Cid’s mocking intervention, and the encounter:—

And another romance worth giving from the Zamora series is the impressive

Fortunately, Lockhart’s omission has been made good by 98 Gibson, though of course no translation can do more than give a hint of the original:—

These ballads are included in the Romancero del Cid, and they are particularly interesting as being the dÉbris of a lost epic on the siege of Zamora which has apparently been utilised in the CrÓnica general; but perhaps a translator might excuse himself for not dealing with them on the ground that the Cid only appears incidentally. Indeed in

the Cid does not appear at all. The same excuse might be given for omitting the well-known

of which Gibson, however, gives a fairly adequate rendering, so far as the difference of language allows:—

So, again, the Cid does not appear in the often-quoted romance beginning—

Nor does he figure in the still more celebrated ballad which records Diego OrdÓÑez’ challenge to the garrison of Zamora after Sancho’s assassination:—

But we may thank Gibson for enabling English readers to form some idea of both. His version of the OrdÓÑez ballad is by no means unhappy:—

To Gibson’s fine instinct we are also indebted for an English rendering of

a ballad of doubtful date which is superbly ‘glossed’ in Las Almenas de Toro by Lope de Vega, who uses the old romances with astonishing felicity. But the most ancient poem in the whole series of the Cid ballads is a composition, said to be unconnected with any antecedent epic, and possibly dating (in its primitive form) from the fourteenth century:—

This romance has been done into English by Gibson with considerable success, as you may judge by the opening stanzas:—

There is still much to be said concerning the Cid romances which Southey dismissed too cavalierly; but my time is running out, and I must pass on to the next ballads translated by Lockhart. Garci Perez de Vargas is a rendering of

and The Pounder, which was referred to by Don Quixote when he proposed to tear up an oak by the roots and use it as a weapon, is a version of

Neither need detain us; both are modern, and the latter is by Lorenzo de SepÚlveda. Much more curious are the group of ballads on Peter the Cruel. In the Spanish drama Peter is represented as the Rey Justiciero, the autocrat of democratic sympathies, dealing out summary justice to the nobles and the wealthy, who grind the poor man’s face. But this is merely what the sophisticated middle class supposed to be the democratic point of view. The democracy, as we see from the anonymous popular poets, believed Peter to be much worse than he actually was, and the romances record the deliberate calumnies invented by the partisans of Peter’s triumphant bastard 102 brother, Henry of Trastamara. This is noticeable in the translation of

which Lockhart calls The Murder of the Master. It is true that Peter had his brother, Don Fadrique, Master of the Order of Santiago, put to death at Seville in 1358; it is also true that Fadrique was a tricky and dangerous conspirator, who had already been detected and pardoned by his brother more than once. The romance passes over Fadrique’s plots in silence, and this is common enough with political hacks; but it goes on to imply that the crime was suggested to Peter by his mistress. This is almost certainly false, and not a vestige of evidence can be produced in favour of it; but no one is asked to swear to the truth of a song, and the dramatic power of the romance—which is supposed to be recited by the murdered man—is undeniable.

A similar perversion of historical truth is found in The Death of Queen Blanche, which Lockhart translates from

Lockhart, indeed, says: ‘that Pedro was accessory to the violent death of this young and innocent princess whom he had married, and immediately after deserted for ever, there can be no doubt.’ But the matter is by no means so free from doubt as Lockhart would have us believe. It is true that Peter’s conduct to Blanche de Bourbon was inhuman, but the circumstances—and even the place—of her death are uncertain. Assuming that she was murdered, however, it is certain that MarÍa de Padilla had no share in this crime. MarÍa appears to have been a gentle and compassionate 103 creature, whose only fault was that she loved Peter too well. But justice is not greatly cultivated by political partisans, and the vindictiveness of the romances is poetically effective. Lockhart closes the series with a version (apparently by Walter Scott) of

and with a disappointing translation of a very striking ballad, in which an undercurrent of sympathy for Peter is observable:—

Refrains of any kind are exceptional in the romances, but in this instance a double refrain is artistically used:—

This is indeed a most brilliant performance, worthy, as Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo says, of GÓngora himself at his best; but the very brilliance of the versification is enough to prove that the ballad cannot have been written by a poet of the people. Still, though it is neither ancient nor popular, we may be grateful to Lockhart for including it in his volume.

He was less happy in deciding to give us The Lord of Buitrago, a version of a ballad beginning

This is not of any great merit, nor is it in any sense popular 104 or ancient: it appears to be the production of Alfonso Hurtado de Velarde, a Guadalajara dramatist who lived towards the end of the sixteenth century, and much of its vogue is due to the fact that it struck the fancy of VÉlez de Guevara who used the first six words as the title of one of his plays. Lockhart was better advised in choosing The King of Aragon, a translation of

This is thought by Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo to be, possibly, the production of some soldier serving at Naples under Alfonso v. of AragÓn, and in any case it is of popular inspiration. Lorenzo de SepÚlveda’s text contains an allusion to a page—un pajecico—whom Alfonso is said to have loved better than himself, and the translator was naturally puzzled by it. It is precisely by attention to some such detail that we are often enabled to fix the date of composition; and so it happens in the present instance. A fuller and better text is given by Esteban de NÁjera, who reads un tal hermano for the incomprehensible un pajecico. This reading makes the matter clear. The reference is to the death of Alphonso v.’s brother Pedro; this occurred in 1438, and the romance was probably written not long afterwards.

At this point Lockhart enters upon the series of border-ballads called romances fronterizos, and he begins with a translation of

quoted by GinÉs PÉrez de Hita in the first part of his Guerras civiles de Granada, published in 1595 under the title of Historia de los bandos de los ZegrÍes y Abencerrajes. 105 PÉrez de Hita speaks of it as ancient, and Lockhart is, of course, not to blame for translating the ballad precisely as he found it in the text before him. Any translator would be bound to do the same to-day if he attempted a new rendering of the poem; but he would doubtless think it advisable to state in a note the result of the critical analysis which had scarcely been begun when Lockhart wrote. It now seems fairly certain that PÉrez de Hita ran two romances into one, and that the verses from the fourth stanza onwards in Lockhart—

are part of a ballad on Boabdil’s expedition against Lucena in 1483. This martial narrative, describing the gorgeous squadrons of El Rey Chico as they file past the towers of the Alhambra packed with applauding Moorish ladies, reduces to insignificance The Flight from Granada, though the translation is an improvement on Lorenzo de SepÚlveda’s creaking original:—

The next in order is The Death of Don Alonso de Aguilar, a rendering of

This ballad commemorates the death of Alonso de Aguilar, elder brother of ‘the great Captain’ Gonzalo de CÓrdoba, which took place in action at Sierra Bermeja on May 18, 1501. This date is important. A serious chronological mistake occurs in the opening line of the ballad, which places Aguilar’s death before the surrender of Granada in 1492; and this points to the conclusion that the romance 106 was not written till long after the event, when the exact details had been forgotten. It is of popular inspiration, no doubt, but it is clearly not ancient. Still, in default of any other romances fronterizos, we receive it gratefully. This section of Lockhart’s book is certainly the least adequate.60 The border-ballads which he gives are most of them excellent, but unfortunately he gives us far too few of them. Some of his omissions may be explained. He tells us in almost so many words that he leaves out a later ballad on Aguilar’s death:—

because there was already in existence an ‘exquisite version’ by the Bishop of Dromore62—whom some of you may not instantly identify with Thomas Percy, the editor of the Reliques. Most probably Lockhart omitted a ballad with 107 an effective refrain (perhaps borrowed from some Arabic song)—

because it had been translated, though with no very striking success, by Byron a little while before.63 Nor can Lockhart be blamed for omitting the oldest of the romances fronterizos:—

Hidden in Argote de Molina’s Nobleza de AndalucÍa,65 this ballad was generally overlooked till 1899 when Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo did us the good service of reprinting it. It still awaits an English translator who, when he takes it in hand, may perhaps have something destructive to say respecting its alleged date (1368). Such a translator might also give us an English version of

which is thought to be the next oldest of these romances fronterizos. Or he might attempt to render

which commemorates the death of Diego de Ribera during the siege of Álora in 1434. A passage in the Laberinto de Fortuna implies that Ribera’s death was the theme of many popular songs in the time of Juan de Mena,68 and possibly the extant romance may be taken to represent them. There is another fine ballad on the historic victory of the Infante Fernando (the first regent during Juan II.’s minority) at Antequera in 1410:—

This also calls for translation, for all that we possess is Gibson’s version of Timoneda’s recast, a copy of verses disfigured by superfine interpolations:—

Nymphs called Narcissa are never met with in popular primitive poetry; but Gibson (from whose version of Timoneda I have just quoted) has happily translated some genuine specimens of the romances fronterizos. Thus he has given us a version of the justly celebrated

in which Juan II. questions the Moor, and declares himself, according to an Arabic poetical convention, the suitor of Granada:—

Gibson has missed an opportunity in not translating one 110 of the popular ballads on the precocious Master of the Order of Calatrava, Rodrigo GirÓn, who was killed at the siege of Loja in 1482:—

But he makes amends with a version of a sixteenth-century romance72 which he entitles The Lady and the Lions: the story has been versified by Schiller, and has been still more admirably retold by Browning in The Glove. And we have also from Gibson a version of a rather puzzling romance given by PÉrez de Hita:—

The fact that full rhymes take the place of assonants is a decisive argument against the antiquity, and also against the popular origin, of this ballad in which, as Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo points out, a rather insignificant Garcilaso de la Vega of the end of the fifteenth century is confused with a namesake and relative who fell at Baza in 1455, and is further represented as the hero of a feat of arms—the slaying of a Moor who insultingly attached the device Ave Maria to his horse’s tail—which was really performed by an ancestor of his about a hundred and fifty years earlier. This later Garcilaso was a favourite of fortune, for, at the end of the sixteenth century, Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la Vega wrote a romance ascribing to him Hernando del Pulgar’s daring exploit—his riding into Granada, fastening with his dagger a placard inscribed Ave Maria to the door of the chief mosque, and thus proclaiming his intention of converting it into a Christian church.

It is needless to discuss Lockhart’s group of so-called ‘Moorish ballads.’74 If any one wishes to translate a romance of this kind, let him try to convey to us the adroitly suggested orientalism of

With scarcely an exception, the ‘Moorish ballads’ show no trace of Moorish origin, and with very few exceptions, they are not popular ballads. They are clever, artificial presentations of the picturesque Moor as suggested in the anonymous Historia de Abindarraez, and elaborated by PÉrez de Hita. We do not put it too high in saying that PÉrez de Hita’s Guerras civiles de Granada—the earliest historical novel—is responsible for all the impossible Moors and incredible Moorish women of poetry and fiction.

But GÓngora’s voice was as the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The tide rose, overflowed the Pyrenees, floated Mademoiselle de ScudÉri’s Almahide and Madame de Lafayette’s ZaÏde into fashion, and did not ebb till long after Washington Irving followed PÉrez de Hita’s lead by ascribing his graceful, fantastic Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada to a non-existent historian whom he chose to call Fray Antonio Agapida. The Moor of fiction is so much more attractive than the Moor of history that he has imposed himself upon the world. Most of us still see him, with the light of other days around him, as we first met him in Scott’s Talisman, or in Chateaubriand’s Aventures du dernier AbencÉrage. Still the fact remains that he is a conventional lay-figure, and that a Spanish poem in which he appears transfigured and glorified is neither ancient nor popular, but is necessarily the work of some late Spanish writer who knows no more of Moors than he can gather from PÉrez de Hita’s gorgeously imaginative pages.

No serious fault can be found with Lockhart’s selection of what he calls ‘Romantic Ballads.’ Most of them are excellent examples, though The Moor Calaynos, an abbreviated rendering of

is no longer ‘generally believed to be among the most ancient’ ballads. It was certainly widely known, as Lockhart says, for tags from it have become proverbs; but it mentions Prester John and the Sultan of Babylon, and these personages are unknown to genuine old popular poetry. According to MilÁ y Fontanals and Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo, the CalaÍnos ballad is one of the latest in the 113 Charlemagne cycle, and is derived from a ProvenÇal version of Fierabras. On the other hand, the original of The Escape of Gayferos—

is an authentic old popular romance derived, it is believed, more or less directly from the Roman de Berthe, while the much later Melisendra ballad—

owes most of its celebrity to the fact that it is quoted by GinÉs de Pasamonte when he acts as showman of the puppets in Don Quixote. Again, The Lady Alda’s Dream—

is an ancient romance of intensely pathetic beauty suggested by the famous passage in the Chanson de Roland describing Charlemagne’s announcement of Roland’s death to his betrothed Alde, Oliver’s sister:—

Another famous ballad in the Charlemagne cycle, translated by Lockhart under the title of The Admiral Guarinos—

is also universally known from its being quoted in Don Quixote. 114 Its origin is not clear, but it seems to be related to Ogier le Danois, and it has certainly lived long and travelled far if, as Georg Adolf Erman reports, it was sung in Russian in Siberia as recently as 1828. A more special interest attaches to the fine elfin ballad—

which Lockhart entitles The Lady of the Tree. It is, as he says, ‘one of the few old Spanish ballads in which mention is made of the Fairies,’ and the seven years’ enchantment reminded him of ‘those Oriental fictions, the influence of which has stamped so many indelible traces on the imaginative literature of Spain.’ The theory of Oriental influence is not brought forward so often nowadays, and is challenged in what was thought to be its impregnable stronghold. The melancholy Kelt has taken the place of the slippery Oriental; but theories come and go, and we can only hope that our grandchildren will smile as indulgently at our Kelts as we smile at our grandfathers’ Arabs.

is the original of The Avenging Childe, a superb ballad which is better represented in Gibson’s version. Compare, for instance, the following translation with Lockhart’s:—

This is more faithful, and consequently more vivid; and the retention of the Emperor, whom Lockhart (for metrical purposes) reduces to a King, gives the English reader a useful hint that the ballad belongs to the Charlemagne series. But its source is obscure, and its symbolism is as perplexing as symbolism is apt to be.

All who have read Birds of Passage—that is to say, everybody who reads anything—will

These lines are recalled by Count Arnaldos, Lockhart’s translation of the enchanting romance which Longfellow has incorporated in The Seaside and the Fireside83:—

Probably nine out of every ten readers would turn to the Buch der Lieder for the loveliest lyric on the witchery of song:—

They may be right, but, if the tenth reader preferred 117 El Conde Arnaldos, I should not think him wrong. Though Heine speaks of

this seems to be a faÇon de parler, for the Lorelei legend was invented by Clemens Brentano barely twenty years before Heine wrote his famous ballad. However this may be, in producing his effect of mystic weirdness the German artist does not eclipse the anonymous Spanish singer who lived four centuries earlier. This is a bold thing to say; yet nobody who reads El Conde Arnaldos will think it much too bold.

Passing by a pleasing song (not in the romance form),85 we come to the incomplete Julianesa ballad which Lockhart printed, so he tells us, chiefly because it contained an allusion to the pretty Spanish custom of picking flowers on St. John’s Day:—

But, so far from being (like its immediate predecessor in Lockhart’s book) an artistic performance, the Julianesa ballad is one of the most primitive in the Gayferos group. Its robust inspiration is in striking contrast to the too dulcet Song of the Galley,87 which is followed by The Wandering Knight’s Song, a capital version of a romance famous all the world over owing to its quotation by Don Quixote at the inn:—

118We need say nothing of the Serenade,89 The Captive Knight and the Blackbird,90 Valladolid,91 and Dragut the Corsair.92 We should gladly exchange these translations of late and mediocre originals for versions of

or of one of the few but interesting ballads belonging to the Breton cycle, such as the old romance on Lancelot from which Antonio de Nebrija quotes—

or of the curious romance glossed by Gil Vicente, CristÓbal de Castillejo, and Jorge de MontemÔr—

or of the well-known ballad which seems to have strayed out of the series of romances fronterizos—

Fortunately these have been translated by Gibson. But we must not part from Lockhart on bad terms, for he ends with the ballad of Count Alarcos and the Infante Solisa:—

This romance, which is often ascribed to a certain Pedro de RiaÑo, is certainly not older than the sixteenth century, and is rather an artistic than a popular poem; but it is unquestionably an impressive composition remarkable for concentrated and pathetic beauty.

Though I have far outrun my allotted time, I have merely brushed the fringe of the subject; still, perhaps enough has been said to stir your interest, and to set you reading the Romancero under the sagacious guidance of Sr. MenÉndez y Pelayo. That will occupy you for many a long day. To those who have not the time to read everything, but who wish to read the very best of the best, I cannot be wrong in recommending the exquisite selection of romances published by M. FoulchÉ-Delbosc a few months ago.98

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